by Matthew Brady

When Denise Beall's fifth wedding anniversary coincided with the completion of her and her husband's three-month master bathroom remodel, she decided to combine the two celebrations.

The result? A romantic dinner for two with candles, flowers and champagne amid the his-and-her sinks, steam shower and custom cabinetry of their new bathroom.

"I surprised my husband," she says. "I think we hadn't even used the bathroom yet."

Despite the economic downturn, projects fit for a champagne christening are still being pursued in Charlotte.

Sally and Jim Randby say the hard times actually compelled them to move ahead with their remodeling projects to help their beloved contractor Robert Iannucci, owner of highly rated Goldstar Kitchen & Bathroom in Charlotte, N.C., First they hired him to remodel their kitchen, then they asked him to complete a bathroom project. Total cost for both projects came to about $150,000.

"We were not affected by the recession, thankfully," Sally Randby says. "We decided we wanted to get this done and why not do it when we knew work was hard to come by?"

Now a granite vanity and earth-tone tile give warmth and color to the Randbys' previous all-white bathroom. "Trying to keep a bathroom clean is difficult enough - a white bathroom clean is like horrendous," she says.

Sally Randby says this may be the last house they own. Beall, however, says she and her husband, Ben, kept one eye on the real estate market when they decided to spend $25,000 to take their master bathroom down to studs and modernize it top to bottom. "We figured that we would get the money back on a resale," she says, although they expect to stay in the house a few more years.

They took out the tub to make room for a large steam shower with body jets, and removed a closet in the hallway to make room for an expanded vanity. "We have another full bath in the house if we should need to take a bath," she says. "I haven't missed it for a moment."

They hired highly rated Gleason Design Studio in Charlotte to put their ideas down on paper. Based on her previous renovation experience, Randby says, "sometimes, contractors don't really get things right if you don't have things written down."

Lead designer Berg Gleason, who has a degree in architecture, also added custom touches for minimal extra cost. "There are custom cabinet places here in Charlotte that use an all-wood product and they are only charging about 15 percent more than an off-the-shelf product at one of your big-box stores that is made of melamine and particle board and things like that," he says. "Custom doesn't have to be expensive."

Those custom touches also bode well for resale value, he says. "In real estate, they say location, location, location. Well, if you've got two houses that have the same basic location, then what is your selling point?" Gleason says. "Then you've got to move to the interiors, and kitchens and bathrooms sell houses.